ECLIPSE

by Richard North Patterson

  Marissa picked at her food. “So where are we?”

  Pierce considered his answer. Though they had sorted through all the pieces, in her anxiety Marissa kept trying to fit them together in her mind, as though obsessive reexamination would yield a new pattern. “My overall thinking,” Pierce began, “is that the murders were a pretext for the massacre, and that therefore the same person—or people—planned them both. The obvious motive is eliminating Bobby and crushing the Asari movement. The obvious unanswered question is, Who wanted that the most?”

  “Karama,” she said tightly. “And Okimbo.”

  “Also FREE, which scorns nonviolence. Maybe Van Daan, or even others from PGL—”

  “They’d hang their own people?”

  Pierce glanced around: their nearest neighbors, two white men, were absorbed in conversation. “But who are Van Daan’s people?” he inquired. “Does he work for PGL, Ajukwa, or both? I still don’t know.

  “That’s the problem—we know nothing about the lynchings, and all we know about the massacre is that it happened. Except for you and Bobby, our only witness is a soldier whose testimony we can’t compel. And he’s the only one who places Van Daan—or at least someone who looks like him—anywhere near Goro.”

  This summary, though no surprise, seemed to distress Marissa. She looked down at the table, her eyes half shut. Pierce tried to console her. “There’s also public relations,” he said. “Your friends in America’s human rights community are trying to pressure the U.S. and PGL. That’s the purpose of our lawsuit: PGL doesn’t want to be found liable for Karama’s and Okimbo’s crimes. If it looks to PGL like we can prove that they knew—or should have known—what would happen at Goro, it may try to salvage Bobby before the case gets any worse. Trevor Hill’s deposition takes us closer: he warned Gladstone about Okimbo before the massacre. What we need is concrete proof tying Van Daan to Goro.”

  “And the thing about oil futures?”

  “Is a flier. We know that Ajukwa is tied to Van Daan; that Van Daan may be tied to Okimbo; and that Okimbo may have ties to General Freedom. If someone linked to Ajukwa knew that those oil workers would be lynched, and then that FREE would raid Petrol Island, who told him? All I know for sure is that it could not be Bobby Okari.”

  Marissa’s shoulders turned in, as though to ward off a chill. “When we were at Berkeley,” she said at last, “I never imagined anything like this.”

  “That’s life,” Pierce responded gently. “It happens a little at a time, until you can’t go back. No point in regretting what no one could foresee.”

  Though casually made, the remark seemed to trigger fresh pain. For an instant, Marissa struggled for composure, then covered Pierce’s hand with hers. “I need to sleep,” she said. But what Pierce heard was that she wished to be alone.

  “Do that,” Pierce said. “I’ll wake you if something happens.”

  When they went upstairs and Marissa closed the door, Pierce waited until he heard the click of her locks.

  HE HAD RECEIVED no e-mails.

  The room was depressing—at once shabby and stark, with the desk light burned out and broken window blinds that obscured Pierce’s view of the darkening creeklands. He had never felt so alone.

  Shirtless and in jeans, he lay across the bed waiting for something to happen. The minutes on his wristwatch, becoming hours, passed with excruciating slowness. He began checking his e-mail at fifteen-minute intervals.

  He thought of Marissa. What he had last seen on her face, he sensed, transcended fear for Bobby: it was a sadness so profound that she could not bear to speak it. But he had no way to touch her and sensed it would be cruel to try.

  The shrillness of a shriek alarm jolted him upright.

  For an instant he was transported to America, imagining a parked car gone berserk. Then he knew that the sound came from Marissa’s room.

  Heading for the door, he stopped abruptly and unzipped the duffel bag with clumsy fingers. Then he burst into the hallway with the gun in hand.

  Marissa’s door was open. Through the crack he saw her bare leg on the carpet, the rest of her blocked from view by a man bending over her. Pierce hesitated, then softly pushed the door open.

  The man was dressed as a soldier. Though Marissa wore only a bra and panties, he appeared to be pulling her upward. Her face was filled with terror. A second soldier, in glasses, backed away, staring wide-eyed at Pierce as he reached for his holstered gun. “Stop!” Pierce shouted, and the second soldier froze.

  The first man, turning, looked at Pierce in surprise. Marissa was breathing hard; Pierce fought to keep his gun steady, aiming at the soldier with glasses. They were both young; suddenly Pierce remembered Clellan and the area boys. “Get out,” he ordered them. “Both of you. Or I’ll make your heads disappear.”

  Pierce had never imagined killing a man before. For Marissa, he could: his voice was surprisingly calm. Standing aside from the door, Pierce glanced from one man to the other.

  Slowly, the man holding Marissa released her.

  More speech was superfluous, instinct told Pierce; what mattered was an air of certainty. He angled his head toward the door.

  The man in glasses let his arm drop to his side. Cautiously eyeing Pierce, he walked to the first man and pushed him toward the door. Briefly glancing at Pierce, the soldier in glasses followed. Pierce heard their footsteps in the dim hallway, not hurrying, as though they were guests themselves.

  Still watching the door, Pierce extended his left hand to Marissa. Pulling herself up, she half-leaned against him, seemingly aware that she should not block his view. “Bring your stuff,” he said.

  Briefly, she pressed her face against his shoulder. Then she went to her suitcase and retrieved a cotton nightshirt. Hurriedly, she closed her bag. Taking her hand, Pierce led her into the hallway, holding his gun as she rolled the suitcase behind her.

  Despite the shriek alarm, the hall was empty. There was no sign that anyone at the hotel cared about what had happened. Pierce glanced through his open door. Seeing no one, he said, “You first.”

  She complied. Backing in, Pierce closed and locked the door, replacing the shriek alarm. Then he began wrestling the chest of drawers over to block it. Marissa came to help him. When they had finished, he asked, “Was that a kidnapping?”

  Marissa shook her head in confusion; it struck him that she had yet to speak. When he sat on the edge of the bed, placing the gun beside him, he realized the safety was still on.

  Bending forward, Pierce touched the bridge of his nose.

  His stomach felt empty. Marissa began to speak, and then could not. A single tear ran down her face.

  Softly, Pierce said, “I’ve never seen you cry before.”

  Marissa shook her head. In a muffled voice, she said, “It’s not because of them.”

  Pierce waited. When she spoke again, she did not look at him, and her voice was flat but clear. “Before Asari Day, I told Bobby how afraid for him I was. What a wife would say to a husband.

  “’Then promise me,’ he answered. ‘If I die, make sure the world does not forget me or the Asari—what we have suffered, why we tried to fight. Please, Marissa, make them remember.’” Briefly, Marissa’s eyes shut. “That was what we’d become. The movement had consumed us—our marriage, as a marriage, had ceased to exist. But I was still his wife. So I promised.”

  Her last few words, Pierce realized, explained everything.

  After a time, he pulled the covers back, placing the gun on the night-stand. Marissa slipped in beside him.

  Turning out the light, he kissed her on the forehead. “I was born lucky, remember? So maybe you can sleep.”

  Time passed in the darkness. Pierce listened for sounds; Marissa, he thought, slept. Then he felt her stirring.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Silently she touched his face, then brought her mouth to his.

  She kissed him softly, her lips still closed, as though this were an experiment. Pierce felt h
imself respond, and then their lips opened.

  At last she drew back. By unspoken consent, tender but urgent, they helped each other undress. Then their bodies came together, overcome by a craving that felt years deep. Without hesitance or prompting, their mouths found the places they both desired.

  When at last Pierce slipped inside her, Marissa’s arms went tight around him. “Damon,” she murmured with a kind of wonder.

  Then neither one could speak. Only after she cried out again, this time from the depths of her, did Marissa repeat his name. “Now you, Damon. Now you.”

  Afterward, they held each other close. “In the morning,” she said softly, “I’ll still be his wife.”

  And I’ll still be his lawyer, Pierce thought. “I know,” he answered, and then his cell phone rang.

  12

  SITTING UP IN THE DARKNESS, PIERCE FLIPPED OPEN HIS CELL PHONE.

  “Yes?”

  “Damon? It’s Jeff Schlosser.”

  Pierce hesitated; intent on FREE, he had not thought of his call to Schlosser. He felt Marissa behind him, her face on his shoulder. “What time is it in D.C.?” he asked.

  “Ten at night—I just got home.” There was a brief silence. “We need an understanding, pal. We can’t make CFTC investigative files public until we either file a case or close one. What I’m about to tell you didn’t come from us.”

  “All right.”

  “I personally looked at our tracking data. Your guy Henry Karlin turns out to be a very major fund-raiser for our incumbent president and a frequent White House guest. But he’s also, one might say, extremely lucky.”

  Pierce stood and began to pace. “In oil futures?”

  “Yup. He bought a slew of futures two days before those lynchings, then cashed in the morning after, to the tune of seven million dollars. He also bought futures four days before the raid on Petrol Island. Yesterday, when the world price per barrel spiked another six bucks a barrel, he exercised his futures contract to buy two and a half million barrels for six dollars less. Then he sold at the new market price. For the math challenged, that’s another fifteen million dollars in profit.”

  “Were there any developments outside Luandia that would lead a speculator like Karlin to buy up oil futures when he did?”

  “Not that I can see. And there’s something else: three months ago, Karlin made his initial killing. You familiar with a group called FREE?”

  In the darkness, Pierce sat again, taking Marissa’s hand. “That’s the group that raided Petrol Island.”

  “Thought so. A week after Karlin’s first big bet on futures, FREE blew up two of PGL’s pumping stations and kidnapped its chief petroleum engineer.” Schlosser’s voice was edgy with excitement. “You’ve got three crisis-type events in Luandia, two clearly tied to FREE. The other—those lynchings—allegedly involves your client Okari. But Karlin cashed in after every one.”

  The implications of this struck Pierce so forcefully that he was silent.

  “So what do you make of it?” Schlosser prodded.

  “The same thing you do. It looks like someone told Karlin in advance of militia actions against PGL, maybe someone with ties to FREE. It couldn’t be Okari—when Petrol Island blew up, Bobby was in prison. Which leaves this question: who knew before it happened that those workers would be lynched?”

  “Maybe whoever lynched them,” Schlosser said impassively. “Good luck.”

  Shutting his phone, Pierce faced Marissa. “What is it?” she asked.

  Pierce told her. “The most benign assumption,” he concluded, “is that someone within FREE is part of a chain of informants that leads to Henry Karlin. The darkest is that FREE planned the lynchings in advance.”

  Though he could not clearly see her face, Pierce sensed Marissa reflecting. “Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe the person passing information to Karlin has ties to FREE and whoever hung the men we saw at the end of Asari Day.”

  The last phrase reminded Pierce of all that she had suffered in six weeks’ time. “Yes,” he quietly agreed. “It could work like that.”

  In their silence, his cell phone rang again. When he flipped it open, a man asked in Luandian-accented English, “Do you not read your e-mail?” Then the line went dead.

  Quickly, Pierce switched on his laptop. Marissa stood beside him, her naked body illuminated by the glow from Pierce’s screen. When he turned to her, a reflex, she gazed back at him, neither proud nor shy. Then he summoned Jomo’s e-mail.

  Its instructions were terse: Pierce was to leave the hotel at once and walk to a bar with a neon Heineken beer sign in its window. “Are you still going?” Marissa asked.

  Pierce turned to her. “I have to.”

  “Then so do I.”

  They dressed together. The strangeness of the moment, with its semblance of domesticity, went unremarked. Only when Pierce put the handgun in his duffel bag did Marissa say softly, “Thank you for saving my life. Or at least from something terrible.”

  Pierce managed a smile. “As I said, I’m lucky.”

  Briefly, Marissa kissed him. When she drew away, still looking at his face, Pierce knew it to be a valedictory. They had acknowledged a desire that, whatever else occurred, could not be satisfied again. “Leave the suitcase,” Pierce said. “Hopefully we’ll be back.”

  IT WAS PAST four o’clock in the morning. The hallway was empty, the hotel lobby quiet. Once again, Pierce wondered if the uniformed intruders were truly soldiers, and how many hotel employees they had paid off to ignore them. Then he and Marissa walked outside.

  There was no one on the pitch-dark street. The only light, perhaps a hundred feet to the right, was a beer sign glowing in the window of an empty bar.

  Pierce turned toward it, duffel bag in one hand, Marissa’s fingers in the other.

  Suddenly, from around a corner, the headlights of a jeep appeared, moving toward them like the eyes of a malevolent bug. As the jeep passed the beer sign, Pierce saw the outlines of raised weapons brandished by four soldiers. He and Marissa froze.

  The jeep kept coming, impaling them on its headlights. Three feet away, brakes squeaking, it skidded to a stop.

  The soldier in the front passenger seat was drinking from a whiskey bottle. The driver, young but cadaverous, leapt from the jeep and walked toward Pierce and Marissa with suspicion burning in his eyes. Stepping in front of Marissa, Pierce faced him.

  The man’s voice was harsh. “So, oyibo, what is your business at this hour? Nothing good, I think.”

  Pierce thought of the gun in his duffel bag, so easily a pretext for their arrest. “Nothing at all,” he answered.

  “This does not impress me. Show what’s in your bag.”

  Pierce knew it would be foolish to resist. Then a deep voice from behind them said, “These are my friends.”

  As the speaker stepped into the headlights, Pierce recognized the man from the Rhino Bar. Calmly, he took a wad of Luandian bills from his back pocket, holding it out to the soldier. “They are also visitors from America.”

  The soldier looked from the man to Pierce, a series of calculations showing in his eyes. Seconds passed. Then he took the money from the stranger’s outstretched hand. “And for her?” he pressed.

  The man from the Rhino produced a few more bills. Counting them, the soldier inquired, “That’s all?”

  “She’s smaller,” the stranger replied with quiet authority.

  Turning, the soldier said something to his companions. Then he got in the jeep and drove away, the soldier in the passenger seat again tipping the whiskey bottle to his lips.

  “Come with me,” the man from the Rhino directed.

  A nondescript Honda was parked near the bar. Edgy, Marissa got in the back seat, glancing up at Pierce. He shut her door and slid in front beside their guide.

  The man from the Rhino drove for minutes in the direction from which the soldiers had come. Just before the road ended, he swerved right, toward a grove of trees, so sharply that Marissa cried out before the
car slipped through the foliage onto a concealed path. They went deeper into the palms and mangroves, perhaps two hundred yards. Then the headlights captured a dilapidated shack beneath a corrugated roof. Stopping the car, the man abruptly told Pierce, “Go inside.”

  Bara trusted this man, Pierce thought, and it was too late to wonder whether he should trust Bara. Nodding toward Marissa, Pierce said, “She comes with me.”

  Together, they left the car and walked toward the shed, Pierce holding the duffel bag. The door was ajar, emitting a soft glow. Pierce entered before Marissa.

  In a chair to one side sat a man holding a gas lantern in one hand and a gun in the other. The man raised his gun, aiming at Pierce’s head, and Pierce suddenly knew he would die in Luandia. He almost said, “Don’t shoot,” then realized how pointless this would be.

  “I know you,” Marissa told the man.

  Eyes still on Pierce, he lowered his gun. “Yes, madam.”

  “Do you have something for us?”

  Slowly, the man placed the weapon in his lap, putting the lamp on the floor beside him. In its light, Pierce saw that he, too, was young, with liquid brown eyes in a sensitive face. “My name is Sunday Opuba,” he told Marissa. “My loyalty is to FREE. I joined the Asari movement to learn whatever I could. So I made it my business to cultivate friendships, smoking weed and hanging out in bars. Two guys I spent time with were Moses Tulu and Lucky Joba—”

  “From Ela,” Marissa said.

  “Yes. Three weeks ago we were in the bar there. Your husband had been arrested; there were many rumors about Goro. We drank much gin. But Joba kept watching me, more keenly than before. Finally, he said, ‘We all know Okari’s finished.’

  “’Yes?’ I asked.

  “’Yes,’ Joba said, like it was settled. ‘But there may be a way for us to profit from it.’ When I asked him how, he said, ‘You should meet the one-eyed colonel.’”

  Pierce glanced at Marissa. Calmly, she said, “Go on.”